Thursday, November 12, 2009

MBTI?

I've been doing some sniffing around online about Myers-Briggs personality typing. I took a quick test yesterday through my school's alumni center, and it typed me as INTJ. IN, ok, but TJ?

Let's rewind. For those of you who need a reintroduction to the new-age personality typing that was all the rage with high school guidance counselors of yesteryear, here's the wikipedia entry.

Anyway, it's no secret that I'm constantly angsting about what I should be doing with my life, so I was hoping for a little insight via 10 minute online quizzie. Unless my powers of recall have lessened considerably with age, I believe I've always tested as INFP. What's this TJ business? Was I feeling particularly thoughtful, judgemental yesterday? Reading more about the INTJ type description, it sounded even less like me than I expected, which leads me to believe that the quiz was rigged and possibly put there to confuse people (like me) dumb enough to take it. As you can probably deduce from my snark, I'm sceptical.

Do I even buy into this personality typing stuff? Is it possible to type yourself through your own perceptions? I don't know. What I do know is that I'm no closer to a potential career in anything.

2 comments:

MBTI is not exactly new-agey. You can type yourself if you really know yourself; don't confuse what you do with who you are though. E.g. being outgoing on your job does not necessarily mean you're an extrovert.It is best to use the test for guidance and the read all the descriptions that are close. You should probably check INFP, INTJ, INTP, and INFJ. The next step would be to understand the theory behind it, e.g. primary, secondary, tertiary. That should allow one to further exclude types. The way I see it though is that you have all 16 types in you. Some are just very dominant.